A HELICOPTER carrying an Australian photojournalist and providing aid to stranded Yazidi refugees has crashed, killing the pilot.

AP and Matthew Benns

News Corp AustraliaAugust 13, 20146:05pm

Displaced ... Iraqi Yazidis who fled their homes when Islamic State (IS) militants attacked the town of Sinjar. Picture: Ahmad Al-RubayeSource:AFP

AUSTRALIAN photographer Adam Ferguson crawled from the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed while evacuating refugees in Northern Iraq yesterday.

“If we had been another 50 meters higher we’d all be dead,” he told his colleagues at The New York Times.

The Russian built Mil Mi-17 chopper crashed on its roof, killing the pilot and injuring passengers, shortly after taking off with 20 to 25 Yazidi refugees on board.

The chopper had been taking food and water to refugees who had fled to the Sinjar mountains in boiling heat to escape Islamic insurgents.

Passengers are helped out of the wreckage of an Iraqi military helicopters that crashed after delivering supplies to Yezidis still trapped in Iraq’s Sinjar mountains. Picture: Adam Ferguson/The New York TimesSource:Supplied

Ferguson, 35, from Newport on Sydney’s northern beaches said the helicopter crashed upside down and the survivors had crawled from the wreckage. He sent a text saying he escaped with a sore jaw and minor bumps.

His colleague, Times Paris bureau chief Alissa J Rubin, was concussed in the crash and suffered at least one broken wrist and some broken ribs.

War photographer Adam Ferguson on a recent visit to his family in Newport, Adam recently won a World Press Award.Source:News Limited

Ferguson immediately grabbed his camera and started shooting the immediate aftermath of the crash and the arrival of the rescue choppers that evacuated them to a hospital in Zakho near the Turkish border for treatment.

In a text he suggested that the cause of the crash could have been that the helicopter was overloaded.

Thousands of Yezidis trapped in the Sinjar mountains as they tried to escape from Islamic State (IS) forces, are rescued by Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Picture: Getty ImagesSource:Supplied

There have been several instances in recent days where aid helicopters have been unable to take off through the sheer weight of desperate people scrambling on board.

However Kurdistan region official Fuad Hussein claimed the pilot had lost control when the helicopter hit a boulder shortly after takeoff.

It is not seasoned war photographer Ferguson’s first brush with death.

In 2009 he won a World Press award for a picture taken of a bombing in Afghanistan.

He arrived while the building was still collapsing and small explosions were still going off.

Twitter image of Major general and pilot Majid Ashour, who died in a chopper crash, during an aid operation, at Mount Sinjar. Picture: TwitterSource:Twitter

Afterwards he said: “As a photographer, you feel helpless. Around you are medics, security personnel, people doing good work. It can be agonisingly painful to think that all you’re doing is taking pictures.”

Lieutenant General Qassim al-Moussawi said in a statement that Iraqi parliamentarian Vian Dakheel, of the minority Yazidi community, was aboard the Russian-built Mil Mi-17 helicopter and was injured in Tuesday’s crash. The pilot, Major General Majid Ashour was killed in the crash.

Fled in terror ... thousands of members of the Yazidi community already escaped the mountain to Syria and were escorted by Kurdish forces back into Iraq. Picture: Ahmad Al-RubayeSource:AFP

Dakheel and others aboard were evacuated to a hospital in the nearby Kurdish autonomous region.

The New York Times reported on its website that reporter Alissa J Rubin, riding along on the helicopter for a story, suffered an apparent concussion and broken wrists in the crash.

Photographer Adam Ferguson, 35, from Newport in NSW, was also on board but uninjured, according to early reports from AP. The New York Times reported that both Rubin and Ferguson were being evacuated from the region to receive medical care.

“The helicopter delivered aid to the people stranded in Sinjar and too many people boarded it and it hit the mountain during takeoff,” said the Iraqi statement.

Conflicting reports attributed the crash to an accidental loss of control by the pilot when the aircraft hit a boulder as it was lifting off.

Sunni militants from the Islamic State group on August 4 took the town of Sinjar in a remote region of Iraq near the Syrian border and gave the local Yazidi minority population an ultimatum to convert to Islam or die.

Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled to the remote and arid Sinjar mountains where they suffered from lack of food and water, prompting Iraq, the US and other nations to airlift them food and water.

Displaced ... Iraqi Yazidis who fled their homes when Islamic State (IS) militants attacked the town of Sinjar. Picture: Ahmad Al-RubayeSource:AFP

Iraqi military helicopters have attempted to ferry out a few of the displaced out but most have been slowly making their way to the protection of the Kurdish autonomous region.

MS Dakheel, the sole lawmaker from the Yazidi community, made an impassioned plea in parliament on August 5 to save her people before leaving for the north.